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The planning for this trip started about 14 months ago, Shane had
been discussing with James, about the virtues of Tokyo Auto Salon,
Japanese chicks, and the pilgrimage to home of the Mazda Rotary,
Hiroshima. James got keen and this stage, and it was all on. As with
our last trip to Japan we had about 12 people that were definitely
coming until the time came to part with the cash. In the end it was
Shane, James, Sandra and I. Our "usual" hotel, the Sakura
in Jimbocho was duly booked and Trudi arranged all the air transport
for us. The only hitch was going to be how we were going to get special
passes to into the Auto Salon on the Friday, Press and exhibitors
day, as general entries would cost around $70.00 and we would only
get 5 hours to see the show. In the past we had gone as guests of
Mazdapeed, but with the demise of the Tokyo based Mazdaspeed in April
'99 another solution was going to need to be found.
Some of the FD Kai guys were corning with us, but they ended up making their
own way there along with Justin and Michelle Gooding, meeting us in Tokyo.
We also hooked up with Ant and Geff from the English RX7 club.
The solution to the tickets arrived in the first week of December (nothing
like a last minute solution), Shane had previously approached the organisers
to get tickets, and they had refused, but I tried a different approach using
the clubs name and they relented, offering us some tickets that would fall
off the back of a unlocked desk when the boss had arranged to leave work early
one night. The tickets finally got here in the days between Xmas and New Year.
The day of the show, we were fortunate to get a lift to the show
with Makio, it saved a train trip of around a hour. Makio is the
owner of the company that sells one of the products that Shane's
latest business venture deals in. The ride to the show was quite
cool as we were chauffeur driven in a large blue Chevy van with
13B Bar plastered all over the sides. The van was fully loaded
with huge white leather seats, air conditioning and GPS navigation
systems. We arrived at the show about 15 minutes early and at that
stage there was 4 queues each over 300 metres long.
The show is huge, absolutely huge. How about approximately 650 show cars
spread over 4 halls? The Japanese car manufacturers were all there.
Mazda had their worst kept secret there, the car we had gone to see, the
RX8. Mazda had chosen not to show a standard one, but had displayed the Mazdaspeed
version and the movie car from the up and coming X-Men II movie. Also there
were two RX7s, a "standard" Mazdaspeed B Spec car and RX7 Mazdaspeed
AI concept car. The concept car had quite cool "skeleton" graphics
on it.
The Mazda stand had 14 cars on it, this included
a couple of Roadster (MX5) coupes on display, I'd be guessing,
that this car will, turn into the new RX7 in time. It was on the
Mazda stand that we met up with of the Mazdaspeed engineers that
Shane had met on previous visits to Japan.
There were not as many Mazda tuners there as there were in '99, but there
were around 30 RX7s (either FC (series415, or FD (batman)), and a JC Cosmo.
RE Amemyia had the largest collection of Rotary powered cars there.
There were obviously cars to cater for any interest, this included
European luxury cars like Mercedes Benz and BMW, and American cars
like Ford Mustangs and SUVs. There was a Ferrari Enzo, and a Mercedes
Racing coupe that looked to be built entirely of carbon fibre.
Yokohama Advan tyres had a huge display that covered there involvement in racing
from the early days, the display included a couple of Le Mans style sports
cars, a Datsun 1200 coupe and a pit display with a couple of Touring Car Toyota
Altezzas.
The car of the show had to be the new Nissan 350Z, every Nissan tuner or bodykit
manufacturer seemed to have one on display. The most oddball things to see
were:
A Volkswagen Kombi ripoff, based on Toyota Hi Ace. The stretched
limo that seats 2 people in the back section based on a plain Ford
Falcon, sure it had a custom XR nose but it was the last model Falcon
and the base model only had the 6 cylinder in it.
The series 5 RX7 modified by the Design School Students that looks
more Lexus that Mazda (until you look at the interior). A customised
Toyota Crown, this version of Crown is more commonly seen as Police
cars and Taxis. The new tittle people movers like the new Nissan
Cube, 1500cc and is literally a box on wheels. Suzuki had a pickup
and a woody version of their box. Nissan had one of theirs with carbon
fibre mirrors, chrome wheels and race seats fitted, very tacky!
After getting to the show by 9.OOam, by 4.30p m it was time to take a rest
and at 5.00 we left to retire ._ for a beer and dinner, we had a Iittle,detour
to go past the Super Autobacs shop in Tokyo Bay. Super Autobacs is the major
auto accessories shop in Japan. The building was huge, bigger than the average
Warehouse branch and it only sold car stuff. You could buy anything from a
toy RX7 to a full aftermarket exhaust system here or air fresher dispensers
to little blue lights for your dashboard, and what's more the guys in the tuning
section actually knew what they were talking about. The whole bottom floor
of this multi-storied building was a workshop. The workshop seemed to be one
that you could hire a bay to work on your car or have the work done by Autobacs
technicians.
Well that about takes up my page allocation tor this
month so this article might have to continue in instalments. So next
month the tuners, car shopping in Tokyo and things you see on the
production line in Hiroshima.
Read Part 2 >>
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